Discord (and other non-indexable chats like Slack) is where conversations go to die and be hidden forever. FOSS and other "open" projects should be using something like Zulip, or even anything else, that can actually be indexed by Google and other search engines.

I'm a part of a few Discords, and questions are repeated over and over again, forever. People who answer the questions, get tired of answering the same thing and eventually stops helping people. In contrast, using Stack Overflow or anything else, people can search Google for answers and actually find it.

Personally I like Discourse. Similar to an old-school forum like phpbb, but with a neat and modern UI.

I know some of the guys that work there too, really cool people.

Well, besides the whole thing about my previous comment that everything you write in Discord stays in Discord and is basically not findable unless you're already a part of the Discord. While phpbb (or any public forum really) is by default readable by anyone, so searching for questions let you find answers without having to sign in and join the forum.

Discord and Discourse are two separate things.

Damn, of course, misread that... Thank you for catching my silly mistake :)

Discord really isn't acceptable as long as they require a phone number to sign in.

(not arguing that discord should be used for these kinds of projects, just an aside)

to my knowledge, this is is only an optional moderation feature on some servers, not a global policy - you can still use discord without an email address if the server rules are loose enough

People who are comfortable with Discord as a platform for support don't make purchasing decisions for accounting software.

Why don't they use IRC with public logs? Or a stack exchange style support wiki, so that it becomes documentation over time.